1 . Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to control methods and devices of a simple node transportation system, and in particular relates to control methods and devices of a simple node transportation system for human-machine interface.
2 . Description of the Related Art
The most common example of a simple node transportation system is a common building elevator system. In general, the transportation system includes a plurality of nodes and a vehicle. The vehicle may stop by the node to facilitate loading or unloading of people or goods. A plurality of nodes of the transportation system is usually located on a route. Except for two terminal nodes of the ends of the route, any node between the terminal nodes has two adjacent nodes. Depending on the system requirements, the vehicle may stop by the nodes which have transportation requests. Each system may comprise many transportation routes and vehicles corresponding to transportation routes, those may be controlled by a control center.
Take the vertical moving elevator transportation system as an example; each floor with an entrance door of the elevator is regarded as a node. The elevator transportation system may comprise one elevator shaft and an elevator, or many elevator shafts and many elevators. More than one elevator route may share a set of the nodes that the elevators stop by. For example, two elevators both stop at the first floor; one of the two elevators stops at odd floors and the top floor, and the other stops at even floors and the top floor. In another example, the floors at which the two elevators stop at are the same.
There are two control types of a simple node transportation system. The first type may be called as intelligent transportation system, which installs a complex control interface at each node. The user can input the target node which he wants to go, and the control center of the system dispatches a vehicle to stop by the node where the user fed input. After the vehicle carries users and/or goods, the control center of the system sends a signal to the vehicle for going to the target node. In transit, the vehicle may stop by other nodes due to other requests, but users and/or goods would only leave the vehicle at the target node. Except for an emergency interface in the vehicle, the vehicle may not be equipped with any control interface. The user only needs to input a command once at the node. Besides, the user does not need to care about the relative direction of the target node. This is why the system called intelligent transportation system.
The second type is more traditional, the system installs a simpler control interface in each node, and the user has to determine by himself the direction of the node to which he wants to go and inputs the direction in the control interface. The control center of the system dispatches a vehicle to stop by the node which the user has input. The user has to determine whether it goes the desired direction when vehicular door opens. After the user enters the vehicle, the user has to input the target node to which he wants to go by a complicated control interface in the vehicle. This type of transportation system requires two-stage inputs, wherein the user inputs the direction of the route at the node in the first stage, and inputs the target node in the vehicle in the second stage.
In practice, due to the number of nodes on the same route being usually more than the number of the vehicles, only a simple interface is installed in each node with one complicated interface installed in the vehicle, the second type is more economical than the first type. Therefore, the installation number of second type transportation system is greater than the first type actually.
Since the development of consumer electronic systems explores in recent years, the electronic systems have made significant progress, and prices have fallen very rapidly. Therefore, there is a need for integrating several features into the aforementioned human-machine interface of a simple node transportation system through electronic systems, such as advertisement, communication, security, monitoring, warnings, and so on.